Sir Patrick Stewart was a noted fan of classical music. In a 2023 interview with Classic FM, the famed actor, who died on Oct. 28, spoke about his love for music.
As a young boy, he saw an orchestra perform Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” sparking a life-long appreciation. Despite that admiration for the art, Stewart himself was not a musician.
“I have pretended to play almost every instrument there is in film or on stage,” he joked. That was the case in the 2019 film Coda, in which he played a concert pianist.
“I played a classical musician whose wife had died. He had stopped playing because he was so depressed, but then he survives and revives and plays a lot,” Stewart said. “They shot it brilliantly. I watched hours of tapes of pianists from the 1920s to watch their bodies and what they did.”
While Stewart said he “loved doing” roles that centered around music, he admitted he could never “play a single” instrument. He sought to change that, however, after he heard Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21.
“I listened to the Mozart piano concerto 21 one evening and in the second movement, which is a beautiful quiet movement, there is a passage [that] I taught myself to play,” he revealed. “Not all of it, but I can play the first few bars of the Mozart 21st piano concerto. It is exquisite.”
What to Know About Sir Patrick Stewart
While not a musician, Stewart was an actor. Fans largely knew him thanks to roles in Star Trek and X-Men.
He died at his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28 after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia,” his spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 86.
“He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all,” Bush Novak said. “We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace.”
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